Tokyo Festival Opens With Grueling Boxing ‘Underdog’ Film

The festivals screenings will be socially distanced among other coronavirus measures, and a scaled-down red-carpet gala will stream online.

The festival also features the Cannes Jury Prize-winning director Koji Fukada screening several of his films, including his latest, The Real Thing, his first adaptation of a comic book, and an official selection at Cannes.

Fukada says independent Japanese filmmakers have a hard time, even those collecting accolades abroad. Japanese government support for films is minimal, he said, a fraction of the funding in South Korea or France. Theaters in Japan are controlled by major studios looking for blockbusters. In contrast, South Korea and France pool a portion of ticket sales to support independent filmmaking.

Japan has no systemic way to support the film industry, Fukada told reporters recently at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Tokyo.

Take agrees making films in Japan is so difficult he fears the best actors and crew will flee to working abroad. He found the environment for working for Netflix, in contrast, wonderful.

Take acknowledged The Naked Director, whose hero makes pornography films, has been slammed as misogynist but he defended the work as a challenge to raise questions.

Its a challenge to depict how women have been oppressed. We want to show more respect for the women, said Take.

He stressed the main character had respect for the actresses, and the second season, which he is working on now, will show how despicable and ignorant all the men were.

This is such a worthwhile, and very difficult, challenge. We may get criticized, but films should not avoid this challenge. And they cant be made otherwise, Take said.

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Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/yurikageyama